Over the weekend I saw this tweet from Andrew Wilkinson:
I love this idea. It connected to me in an unexpected way. I've been spending a lot of cycles thinking about decision-making. Over the past few years as a UX lead - first at Sapient and now at DraftKings - I've helped shape team structure and process. I'd grown into this responsibility as I progressed in my career. But no time was spent training me on how to build process. Sure, I have experiences - been in good situations where the team delivered exceptionally and bad situations where the projects was a shit-show from top to bottom - but that's not a study of process.
Also, to some extent I distrust experience as a way of making decisions. This is for two reasons. First, I haven't had all the experiences there are to have. In terms of experience I'm missing pieces. So how can I build a process based on only what I've seen? Second, I've seen others make bad design decisions based on their experiences. Choices I would not agree with based on my direct experiences. So if I see others making bad decisions and they don't know better, why would I think I'm not doing the same thing.
So I'm thinking about decision-making as a repeatable process where, if followed, I can be as sure as possible that I'm generally going about it the right way. Which is why Andrew's tweet struck me as interesting. Is there a way that decision-making can be defined clearly enough to ensure a good (or more likely good) outcome?
I think so. Though I don't know what that looks like at the moment. Responses to Andrew's tweet suggested several apps/sites out there that offer help, though I found the approaches they take lacking. In some form or another, they treated making a decision as a simple math equation. Input relevant facts, weight them, the app spits out an answer. That doesn't feel right. That doesn't feel like how decisions are made. They can't be reduced to simple either/or statements. I think evaluating and contemplation are necessary parts.
I'm going to think some more about this idea. I think it's interesting, and valuable. I need to work through what this service might look like.